This episode, the 7th in my sequential Buddhist History series, covers the first 200 years or so of Buddhism, beginning with the traditional account of events immediately after the Buddha’s passing. Then I describe how the ordained Sangha met to compile and codify his teachings and their code of discipline, and eventually began dividing into different sects and schools. This is a fascinating story that reflects what really mattered to early Buddhists.

I spent the last 4 sequential Buddhist history episodes covering the life of the founder of Buddhism, ShakyamuniBuddha, from his birth approximately 2,600 years ago, through his childhood, spiritual search, enlightenment, teaching career, and death at age 80. Those episodes also talked about the Buddha’s main teachings, and the development of the early Buddhist community, or Sangha. (Click here to browse history episodes.)

This episode is about the first 200 years or so of Buddhism after the death of Shakyamuni. There are different ways of estimating when the Buddha lived, so our story begins between 578 and 447 BCE.[1] I’ll begin with the traditional account of events immediately after the Buddha’s passing. Then I’ll describe how the ordained Sangha met to compile and codify his teachings and their code of discipline, and then eventually began dividing into different sects and schools. This is a fascinating story that reflects what really mattered to early Buddhists.

There are two things I discussed in previous episodes I want to remind you about in preparation for today’s presentation:

Our sources of information about the Buddha’s life and early Buddhism are very limited. There is almost nothing in the way of archaeological evidence, so we have to rely primarily on traditional Buddhist texts – which, throughout the time frame we’re talking about in this episode, were transmitted orally. I discussed the strengths and weaknesses of basing our understanding of Buddhist history on these kinds of sources in Episode 11.

By the end of the Buddha’s life, the Buddhist community consisted of thousands of ordained monks and nuns, plus countless lay followers and supporters.

The ordained community was called the Sangha, and it was governed by a code of discipline called the Vinaya. The Vinaya regulated monastic behaviour and gave instructions for community governance. The Buddha emphasized that maintenance of the Vinaya was essential for the long-term survival of Buddhism.

Upon his death, the Buddha had not named a successor, but instead told his followers that from then on, “Whatever Dhamma & Vinaya I have pointed out & formulated for you, that will be your Teacher when I am gone.”[2]

The Buddha’s Funeral

As promised, I’m picking up our story immediately after the Buddha’s passing. The account I’m using of events right after the Buddha died is from a Buddhist text from the Pali Canon called the Mahaparinibbana Sutta (DN 16). As I discussed in Episode 11, these texts obviously can’t be taken as straightforward historical accounts, and they are embellished with reports of all kinds of supernatural events. However, the stories have been handed down for over 2,600 years and are deeply significant to Buddhists, so I’ll present them to you without further comment on their historicity.

According to the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, the Buddha’s death was immediately followed by earthquakes, and admiring eulogies from various gods. Hundreds if not thousands of people had gathered around the Buddha as he lay dying, and even more arrived afterwards. Many of them were overcome with grief, not just at the loss of the Buddha himself, but because they had not yet fully awakened and would no longer have him there to guide them in their practice and study. According to the Sutta, people “who were not without passion wept, uplifting their arms. As if their feet were cut out from under them, they fell down and rolled back and forth, crying, ‘All too soon is the Blessed One totally unbound!’ …But [the sutta continues] those monks who were free from passion acquiesced, mindful and alert [saying]: ‘Fabrications are inconstant. What else is there to expect?’”[3]

Lay and monastic follower alike maintained a 6-day wake for the Buddha’s body, and on the 7th prepared it, as the Buddha himself had instructed, in the manner of a “wheel-turning monarch.” (A wheel-turning monarch, or chakravartin, was an ancient Indian term for an idealized emperor who would rule the entire world with great wisdom and benevolence.) According to the sutta, they wrapped the Buddha’s body in linen, and then in teased cotton wool, and again in linen, repeating this 500 times. Then they placed the body in an “iron oil-vat,” covered it with an iron lid, and built a pyre underneath it. However, they weren’t able to ignite it, the story goes, until one of the Buddha’s foremost disciples, Mahakashyapa, arrived with his retinue and they all paid their respects. Then the pyre spontaneously burst into flame.

Once the body was cremated, the bones that remained were called relics, and carefully distributed among representatives of the neighbouring republics. The receivers of the relics were instructed to place them in grand stupas, or burial mounds, built at the intersections of two major roads. Then, the sutta says, people will be able to visit the stupas and pay homage there, offering “a garland, a scent, or a perfume powder,” or they can bow down, or “brighten their minds” at the stupa and thereby benefit “their long-term welfare & happiness.”[4] Devotional practices around stupas figure prominently in Buddhism from then on – but more about that in a future episode.

The First Buddhist Council (between 544-480 BCE)

According to tradition – that is, what’s reflected in ancient, canonical Buddhist literature, and held to be true by various extant schools of Buddhism – a council, or communal recitation,[5] was held a few months after the Buddha’s death in order to recite and agree on what he had taught. Because Shakyamuni’s instructions were to rely on his Dhamma and Vinaya as their teacher once he was gone, it seemed very important to establish exactly what that Dhamma and Vinaya was.

The canonical literature says the Buddha’s foremost disciple at the time, Mahakashyapa, summoned 500 arhats – fully enlightened disciples of the Buddha – to Rajagraha for the council. Although Buddha’s attendant, Ananda, was not yet an arhat, he was also invited because of his renowned ability to recall everything the Buddha had said.[6] At the council, Ananda recited all the Buddha’s discourses, which came to be called suttas (or sutras, in Sanskrit). Another disciple, Upali, was an expert in monastic discipline and recited the Vinaya. These two types of Buddhist scripture composed the first two “baskets,” or pitaka, of the Pali Canon.[7] At this point, and for another four hundred years, this canon was maintained as an oral tradition.

Apparently, even at the beginning, there wasn’t total agreement within the Sangha about the exact course to take with respect to how to organize themselves. Andrew Skilton, in his book A Concise History of Buddhism, reports that a canonical Pali source describes how a monk named Puraṇa arrived at the end of the council. He had 500 disciples of his own, and when asked to endorse the results of the council he declined, stating that he could remember the teachings well enough on his own.[8]

Diversification in the Sangha

Over the next hundred years or so, there was inevitable diversification in the Buddhist Sangha. As I just mentioned, not everyone agreed on the results of the first council, and there was no single leader or central authority exercising bureaucratic control over the many Buddhists and their communities.[9] In addition, Buddhists were spread all over northern India at a time when travel was slow and difficult, and any communication of “official” decisions would have to be oral. Finally, while the Buddha and his retinue had spent much of their time traveling around, over time Buddhist monastics tended to become less itinerant and more settled, as monasteries became more established. Lay people would visit the nearest monastic community to hear the teachings, and Buddhist communities are believed to have become increasingly more geographically distinct.[10]

According to the tradition of the Buddhist Sangha, it was possible to form a new and independent nikaya, or monastic community, with as few as four monks.[11] Nikaya means “group” or “assemblage,”[12] and a monastic nikaya would typically be based on a common version or interpretation of the monastic code, or Vinaya. Apparently, in the early centuries of Buddhism, it was differences of opinion about the Vinaya – sometimes quite minor – that were the primary reasons for divisions and differentiations within the Sangha, rather than differences of opinion about doctrine.[13] In any case, the arising of various monastic nikayas probably also facilitated the diversification of Buddhist doctrine.

Still, while a certain amount of variety and difference was apparently acknowledged and tolerated by the early Sangha, causing a true schism in the Sangha was considered a terrible thing. Many rules in the monastic Vinaya forbid speech and actions that might lead to such a result, and to cause a schism in the Sangha was considered a heinous crime on par with injuring a Buddha or murdering a parent![14] So there was tension present in the evolution of the early Sangha, as inevitable diversification of the overall Buddhist community took place within a monastic code that clearly valued Sangha unity, harmony, and discipline. As is the case in the development of sects within most religions, when issues arose, it seems like the main question was always whether the difference was big enough to merit a schism.

The Second Buddhist Council (between 444 and 380 BCE)

Traditional Buddhist accounts say there were two councils held within the first century after the Buddha’s death. Scholars aren’t sure about the exact timing of the second council, but it probably took place between 70[15] and 100 years after the first. (The traditional description says “100 years,” but such a round number may have just been a symbolic way to indicate a long time.[16]) Apparently, the second council was held in the city of Vaisali in response to concerns that the monks there were becoming lax with respect to the monastic discipline.

According to one version of events, described by Robinson et al in the book Buddhist Religions: A Historical Introduction,[17] the Vaisali monks had adopted a principle that in one’s conduct as a monk it was permissible to follow the example and instructions of one’s personal teacher. In other words, the exact interpretation of the Vinaya could vary a little – particularly around practical matters such as whether it was appropriate to add salt to one’s alms meals, or handle money. At the council, a committee of elders ruled against the Vaisali monks.

Other accounts of the second council claim it resulted in the first real schism within the Buddhist community. In the Chronology of Theravadin Buddhism on the Access to Insight website, it states that 100 years after the Buddha’s death, “the Second Council convenes in Vesali to discuss controversial points of Vinaya. The first schism of the Sangha occurs, in which the Mahasanghika school parts ways with the traditionalist Sthaviravadins. At issue is the Mahasanghika’s reluctance to accept the Suttas and the Vinaya as the final authority on the Buddha’s teachings. This schism marks the first beginnings of what would later evolve into Mahayana Buddhism, which would come to dominate Buddhism in northern Asia.”[18]

According to Skilton, there are versions of the story about the second council that suggest this schism actually happened a few decades later, possibly at a third Buddhist council not included in Theravadin accounts.[19] If this is the case, the schism may be conflated with the second council because it is said it was the Vaisali monks outvoted at the second council who later formed the Mahasanghika faction. In any case, somewhere in this time period – less than 150 years after the Buddha – the first real schism within the Buddhist community occurred.

The First Schism: Mahasanghika and Sthaviravada

As mentioned earlier, real sectarian divisions within the early Sangha were due to differences of opinion around the Vinaya, or monastic code.[20] With regard to this first schism, we get two different versions of events – one from Theravadin sources, and the other from extant Mahasanghika texts. (Both of these sources, of course, were only committed to writing hundreds of years later.)

As implied by the Theravadin account on Access to Insight, the Sthaviravadins presented themselves as being conservative protectors of the traditional way, and accused the Mahasanghikas of being lax with respect to the Vinaya by neglecting a number of its rules. (Note: Theravadin Buddhism eventually developed out of the Sthaviravadin lineage; while the schools are not exactly equivalent, sthavira is Sanskrit for “elder,” and thera is Pali for elder, so both names mean “way of the elders.”) The Mahasanghikas, on the other hand, claimed the Sthaviravadins had actually added rules to the Vinaya, or were insisting on including minor rules that the Buddha had said could be discounted.[21]

Part of what helped early Buddhists decide whether a disagreement had risen to the level of schism was the purity of intentions behind the contending positions.[22] In this case, as the Access to Insight account implies, the Sthaviravadins saw their opponents as demonstrating “reluctance to accept the Suttas and the Vinaya as the final authority on the Buddha’s teachings,” a serious accusation. A later Mahasanghika text accused the Sthaviravadins of being “avid for glory” and “prone to disputing,” and of adding material to the Vinaya in order to deceive beginners.[23] So, you can probably see why this argument wasn’t easily resolved.

The (Probably) Apocryphal Story of the Mahasanghikas vs the Sthaviravadins

In preparing this part of the episode, I ran into difficulties because some of my sources suggested there were significant doctrinal differences between the Mahasanghikas and Sthaviravadins, and these contributed to the schism. In John Snelling’s The Buddhist Handbook, for example, he says the Mahasanghikas “differed philosophically from the Sthaviravadins in that they favoured the arguments propounded by one Mahadeva, which set the standards for arahats at a rather less an exalted level than the Sthaviravadins.”[24] Apparently, Mahadeva taught that arhats could be seduced and experience doubt, and that they were ignorant of some matters and could be further instructed by another person. This contrasts sharply with the early Buddhist perspective that arhats were completely enlightened and incapable of regression or transgression.

I ended up writing a juicy section on this doctrinal debate, inspired in part by a quote from scholar Edward Conze that Snelling includes in his section on this topic, in which Conze describes the Mahasanghikas as “taking the side of the people against the saints, thus becoming the channel through which popular aspirations entered into Buddhism.”[25] It was easy to imagine the Mahasanghikas rising up in schism against elitist Sthaviravadin monks, at least some of whom would have claimed arhat status. Arhatship was considered more or less sainthood, at least at the time of the Buddha, and was held to be incompatible with lay life. Plus, the Mahasanghika sect was a likely forbear of Mahayana Buddhism, which in later centuries did indeed champion the lay person as being fully capable of enlightenment.

However, I ended up deleting my dramatic tale of this early Buddhist schism, as it seems I fell in the same trap as previous scholars: telling a good story, in part because it just seems like it must be true. In looking for more corroboration of doctrinal differences being apparent in the unfolding of the first Buddhist schism, I realized that most of my other sources either completely left out a discussion of the doctrinal debate, or suggested the significant differences between the doctrines of the Mahasanghikas and Sthaviravadins were unlikely to have contributed significantly to the original schism.[26] Instead, these important doctrinal differences grew over time, particularly after the two sects were formally separated. However, in subsequent versions of events, the later doctrinal differences were sometimes projected back to the time of the second or third council.[27]

I tell this story about different renditions of Buddhist history in order to illustrate how much history is a collection of stories. Especially when piecing together events from thousands of years ago, before written records, actual facts are almost non-existent. Sometimes we can compare the later written texts preserved from several different sects or schools of Buddhism – and this is how we arrive at any sense of what happened at the second council – but all of these texts tell their own version of events, almost always with a sectarian slant. Still, sometimes talking about the stories Buddhists have told – and still tell – about their own history, is also part of the history!

The Eighteen “Schools” of Buddhism

Another part of the story Buddhists tell about their history is that, within the first couple hundred years, eighteen different doctrinal schools of Buddhism arose. (These differentiations would be apart from the Mahasanghika/Sthaviravada split.) The actual number is probably much higher, given that lists of the 18 schools vary, and unique entries total far more than eighteen. It’s also conspicuous that when Chinese pilgrims visited India over 800 years later, in the 7th century CE, there were still considered to be only 18 Buddhist schools; it may be that the number 18 was settled on as conventional or symbolic.[28]

The significance of all these different Buddhist schools is different than the development of various sects in a religion like Christianity. Because the critical unifying aspects of the religion were the monastic code of discipline and the adoption of particular spiritual practices, differences of opinion about doctrine were less divisive than in a religion based on faith. In The World of Buddhism, Bechert and Gombrich explain that doctrinal schools were called “vada,” which could be translated as “view,” “school of thought,” or “debate.” Debate was a part of monastic education, and, “The Vinaya allows monks full freedom of thought so long as they are sincere in the views they propound.”[29]

These eighteen schools did not usually reflect different Buddhist sects, or even different communities. The subtleties of distinction between the schools were probably irrelevant to lay supporters and practitioners, and the boundaries of monastic communities, as mentioned earlier, were defined as nikaya by their common code of discipline. It was possible, then, for monastics living in the same community to identify with different schools,[30] and there’s even an example of a doctrinal school that more or less had to exist as two schools, because it was composed of two groups with different Vinaya who therefore had to live separately (the Sarvastivadins and the Mula-Sarvastivadins).[31]

The book Buddhist Religions: A Historical Introduction gives what I think is a very useful description of the development and significance of Buddhist vada:

“There is a frequent tendency to reduce each of these schools to a set of doctrines to which all the followers of the school supposedly adhered, a tendency that the scholastic philosophers themselves indulged in when trying to point out the weak points of other schools or to define true orthodoxy in their own… A better way to conceive of these schools is as long, ongoing conversations on particular topics, the list of topics being the factor that best defines the school.”[32] (BR pg. 117)

The Creation of the Abhidharma

The eighteen schools are sometimes called the “Abhidharma schools,” because their points of difference had largely to do with that part of the established Buddhist textual tradition. According to Skilton, the prefix abhi can be translated as “above,” or “for the sake of, with regard to,” so while Abdhidharma is often translated as “higher teaching,” it could also be interpreted as meaning “for the sake of the Dharma,” or even “ancillary to the Dharma.”[33]Abhidharma is considered the “third basket” of the Buddhist canon. As I mentioned earlier, the Buddha’s discourses formed the “Sutta” basket, and the monastic code of discipline formed the “Vinaya” basket. The three parts of the canon as a whole are called the “Tipitaka,” or three baskets.

The Abhidharma began to be developed not long after the Buddha’s death (although, in order to legitimize the material, parts of it are sometimes attributed to the Buddha himself).[34] The Abhidharma began, apparently, as an initial effort by early Buddhists to organize the teachings and make them easier to remember, comprehend, and pass on.[35] The discourses, or suttas, invite this kind of effort, because they consist of sermons the Buddha gave in particular places and times, in response to particular audiences and circumstances, over the course of 45 years. They overlap in subject matter, differ drastically in length, number in the hundreds, and were not meant to be complete and linear presentations of the whole of Buddhist thought. Early Abdhidharmists sought to distill principles and lists from the suttas.

Gradually, over time, these distillations of the suttas were expanded into a complex Buddhist philosophy about the nature of reality from the point of view of human consciousness. All the Abhidharma material was meant to be rooted in the teachings of the Buddha, but inevitably monks began thinking about profound implications of those teachings.

Of particular interest was breaking down experience into dharmas-with-a-little-d, which essentially means “things,” or “phenomena.” A dharma is a fundamental unit, or element, of reality. There are both physical dharmas – such as solidity, heat, movement, and coherence – and mental dharmas such as feelings, perceptions, impulses, mindfulness, will, and reflection. There are positive dharmas like faith, which advance you on the path to liberation, and negative ones such as greed, hate, and delusion, which tend to set you back on the spiritual path.[36] In the Abdhidharma, dharmas are analysed and categorized in order to describe and reflect all the aspects of human experience, particularly regarding the process of spiritual practice and awakening.

Examples of Two Vadas: The Puggalavadins and Sarvastavadins

I’ll talk more about the Abhidharma literature in future episodes. Today I want to finish up by briefly describing two of the early Abhidharma schools, so you get an idea of the topics that concerned these early practitioners.

In general, the Abhidharmists saw dharmas as momentary events that existed in the flow of a causal process. At the same time, dharmas were viewed as having a sort of “own being” that defined their existence, and unique qualities that allowed them to be distinguished as a dharma. It’s exactly this kind of “own being” that the Buddha seemed to imply was lacking behind the human sense of self, in his teaching of anatta, or not-self. Some subsequent Abdhidharma philosophy seemed to conclude the self, or person, was just an illusion created within a causal flow of real dharmas.

The Puggalavadins arose as a school of thought around 280 BCE, taking issue with what they saw as a rather impersonal process of breaking reality down into its constituent, momentary elements while forgetting the “person” who was striving for enlightenment.[37] Puggalavadin can be translated as “personalist,” and this school postulated a self that exists in a subtle way. As the Buddha taught, this self isn’t the same as the skandhas (that is, the constituent elements of a human being, or form, sensation, perception, mental formation, and consciousness), nor can this self be found separate from the skandhas. Nevertheless, the Puggalavadins insisted, there had to be some one who perceives, remembers, practices, experiences results, and attains Nirvana. They figured this “person” had a subtle kind of existence that couldn’t be directly perceived, but rather was implied – kind of like a Buddhist version of a soul. This belief put them in direct contradiction to the Sthaviravadins, who denied the existence of any such thing – or at least taught that such a belief was incompatible with the Buddhist path.

Another school, the Sarvastivadins, wondered how, if all dharmas were momentary, anything could be known (it would have to exist long enough for us to perceive it and cognize it and become aware of our cognition). Perhaps mental dharmas were momentary, but what about physical ones, such as a mountain? Sarvastivadin means “those who teach everything exists,” and they believed that the own-being of dharmas wasn’t limited to the present moment. In other words, although dharmas were momentary, past, present, and future dharmas all exist.[38] Therefore, it’s possible to perceive and know something even though it was only momentarily existent (you’d actually be perceiving a past dharma). Something like a mountain consisted of a series of momentary flashes of dharmas, but because past dharmas existed they could influence and condition subsequent dharmas, and pass on their mountain-like qualities. (This is, of course, an extreme simplification of the philosophies of both of these schools, and how they relate to the overall Abhidharma.)

While these may sound like pretty obscure philosophical arguments, you can also see how this was a philosophical response to real, relevant spiritual questions. For example, if the person or individual is not a dharma, or a fundamentally existent thing, then there is no “one” who commits an action and then experiences the result. Therefore, there seems to be no motivation for moral behaviour. Early Buddhists wondered, what is the nature of enlightenment? Once someone achieves it, will they naturally act morally? Does enlightenment mean your mind is completely purified of all negative dharmas like greed, hate, and delusion, or is it possible to be awakened and still experience some of those defilements? Why do certain habits and mind-states keep arising in us even when our circumstances have changed and we want things to be different?

Each school and type of Buddhism has developed its own way of guiding practice and explaining human experience despite Buddhist teachings like anatta (no-self) and emptiness. Schools and sects with different doctrines and philosophies have coexisted more or less peacefully since the time of the Buddha because the essence of Buddhism lies not in a set of dogmas about the nature of reality – even about self, or moral causation – but in the vigorous and firsthand exploration of that reality. Debate and philosophy and various points of view are fine – as long as they bring about a positive spiritual effect. Buddhists even disagree on exactly what the positive spiritual effect should look like, but in general it means seeing through and shedding delusions and attachments, transcending self-centeredness, cultivating wisdom and other beneficial qualities, and liberating ourselves from the cycle of suffering.